The Good Night
by Charles RocketBoy
Summary: Jessie is scared. She's getting older. Everything she has, everything she is will slip away and she can't stop it. Her destruction is coming and there's only one solution she'll accept...


AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story follows on from an earlier one called Sweet Poison. Basically, TR got captured by Jessebelle- as a result, they're now in Kanto and far from Ash & Co. (It's been up on site before but was accidentally deleted- now it's back)

-

It had started when they'd attempted to raid Leaf Stones from a Plant Pokemon convention. Jessie was doing the actual stealing, while the guys provided a distraction.

They were very good at distractions.

"**I COME FROM THE NET**."  
As one, the convention turned to watch the strange man leaping onto a table, clad in tight blue spandex with silver-dyed hair.

"Through Systems, peoples and cities… to this place…"  
"MEGAFRAME!" roared Meowth, charging forwards with his fur painted blue and a clunky metal mask strapped to his head. "MY DOMAIN!"  
"I don't think so, Megabyte!"

And with that, James and Meowth started to duel with toy lightsabers. By this point, Jessie had swiped twenty Leaf Stones and was now attempting for a bonus by snatching a Pokeball.

She saw one promising figure, with a full set of four. Completely transfixed on the stageshow, he wouldn't notice when she softly took them from his belt-

Jessie saw a glimpse of his face.

She stood still for a moment, and then left the convention very quickly. His Pokeballs stayed where they were.

James and Meowth left soon afterwards, moving after they heard a cry of "whose the cunt that pinched my Leaf Stones?!". They hadn't noticed Jessie had already headed back to camp, and they arrived back after she'd stopped crying.

-

It was silly, really. After the horrors of Jessebelle and the scars left on her face, she was rattled by something like _that_? Just seeing an old man?

But it was more than that. She'd been thinking about age for years now. It surfaced occasionally, brought to the surface by some hideous convection current. She always pushed it down again, but it never went away. The fear. The fear of aging.

She was beautiful. She was proud of that. The thought of her beauty had sustained her for years, and the scar she'd gained across the left side of her face had nearly broken her before she decided to view it as making her sexier.

But with age her hair would turn grey. With age her breasts would sag. With age her skin would wither and decay. With age her beauty would vanish, her desirability would vanish and then she'd be nothing.

It was terrifying. And she couldn't stop it. There was nothing she could punch or shoot to make it go away. Nothing to take out her anger, fear and frustration on.

So she went to James and punched him in the face, inventing some reason about taking too long at the convention. It rebuilt her confidence, for a while.

Then she started to think about what he'd do when she got old. How they'd have sex less, how he could get old and die. How they could all die, everyone she knew.

Die and leave her alone.

-

"I want to kiss you but I want it too much, I want to taste you but your lips are venomous poison…"

"Cut the Alice Cooper shite," said Meowth.

James responded by hitting him on the head with the guitar. "Alice Cooper is a god, you philistine!"

"Whateva. But d'ya have to sing Poison _every fuckin' time_ you have probs with Jessie?"  
"Yes!"

"Give me strength…" Meowth covered his ears and tried to curl up.

"Oh all right, I'll stop playing." James put the guitar down and flopped over onto the ground. "I wish I knew what was distressing her so. She knocked a tooth out, she never does that unless she's really upset."  
"Probably age again."  
"What?"  
"Ah, she's afraid about goin' grey," said Meowth. "Talked to Arbok about it once, I talked to Arbok, yadda yadda. She ain't never talking to you 'bout it course. Think she's afraid you might leave when she starts ta sag. Or maybe she just wants ta pretend it ain't never gonna happen."  
"She did once tell me she wanted to die young. I-I didn't know she felt this strongly about it." He felt like an idiot now- how could he not have seen? How? "I never really thought about us all getting old," he said, as if to explain it away.

"Coz you're perpetual adolescent fantasies, youse are. You two just don't work as adults or oldies." The cat snorted in disgust. "Sure hope I do. I ain't got long. Us Pokemon, we don't live as long as youse humans and de only Pokemon in da crew that will last more den eight more years is Arbok. Reptiles live longer den mammals, see, coz of…" He trailed off, looking over at James. There was a tear forming in his eye.

"_Eight years_?" His voice was a dry croak. "Eight years and you're all dead?"  
"Well, yeah. I try not ta think 'bout it."  
"Is that all we have? Is that all that's left of Team Rocket?" The tears were flowing freely and he hardly noticed. "Eight years, maybe more or less, and then it's all over? Then you're all dead, I start to lose my looks and Jessie…" He swallowed. "Oh god. Jessie. I-I don't want to see her as an old woman. It's… it's _wrong_. She's not meant to be like that. She's meant to be young and strong and hot and not, not, not half-dead! None of us are meant to fucking be like that!"  
Meowth felt uncomfortable. Jessie was always the one who dealt with this, usually by smacking James, but that wouldn't work now. He didn't really know what to do or say.

He went ahead anyway.

"See, dis is why she didn't say anythin' to you. And really… What could ya do anyway?"  
A few seconds later and the tears stopped. There was a mad glint in James' eye.

"Oh, there's something," he whispered.

-

When things got bad, there was always explosives, and so Jessie kept her mind off the problem by throwing grenades into a small pond. It was working, but she would soon run out of them and then the fear would come back.

James arrived before that, clutching a piece of paper.

"I'm busy causing minor ecological destruction!" she snapped. "If you haven't brought some napalm, fuck off!"  
"I know what the problem is, Jess." He smiled slightly. "Scares me too. Age is really scary.

"I remember my granddad dying. He lived on the estate with the rest of us, so at the age of four I got to see him wasting away with each passing day, inching closer to death until the cancer had turned him into a desiccated horror and I was too scared to be alone with him.

"I can see why you don't want to go out like that."  
"Well, we haven't got a fucking choice, do we?" she snapped. "We get old, ugly and senile, then we die."

"Maybe not. See, I've been talking to the Pokemon. And we've figured out a solution, if you want to do it."

"What is it?"

He held the paper up. Printed on it, in ornately gothic handwriting, was 'Team Rocket Euthanasia Manifesto'.

"In exactly six years time, whatever we're doing and wherever we are, we'll get together. Have a party, one last big meal, drink, battle, fuck, whatever. And then we'll strap ourselves to a load of explosives and go out with a bang so great it'll be heard for miles around. No aging. No deaths. An end to it all while we're still young.

"Are you in?"  
Her eyes widened, her anger dropped and her throat begin to tighten. Slowly, she stepped forward and looked at the document again. It had already been signed by the others. The gang was all there.

And she felt this great surge of hope and joy.

"Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. Give me a pen."  
He did so, and she signed away her life in a second with a smile on her lips.

It was going to be a wonderful life.

FIN


End file.
